Commonwealth v. Vuthy Seng
| Decision Date | 07 February 2002 |
| Citation | 436 Mass. 537,766 NE 2d 492 |
| Parties | COMMONWEALTH v. VUTHY SENG. |
| Court | United States State Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts Supreme Court |
Present: MARSHALL, C.J., GREANEY, IRELAND, SPINA, COWIN, SOSMAN, & CORDY, JJ.
Brownlow M. Speer, Committee for Public Counsel Services
(Catherine K. Byrne & Daniel E. Callahan, Committee for Public Counsel Services, with him) for the defendant.
Eric R. Barber-Mingo, Assistant District Attorney (Richard D. Grundy & Melissa Weisgold Johnsen, Special Assistant District Attorneys, with him) for the Commonwealth.
The jury rejected the defendant's insanity defense and convicted him on three indictments of murder in the first degree based on theories of deliberate premeditation and extreme atrocity or cruelty. The jury also found the defendant guilty of armed assault with intent to murder, assault and battery,1 and possession of a firearm without a license. The defendant appeals from his convictions, claiming that (1) the admission of his statements to the police during a custodial interrogation violated his rights under the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution because the recitation to him of the Miranda rights was inadequate and because the statements were involuntary in the totality of the circumstances; (2) certain bank records were obtained improperly by exploitation of an inventory search for investigative purposes; (3) the prosecutor's repeated assertions to the jury that the defense had "insulted" them with evidence relating to the defendant's treatment at Bridgewater State Hospital prejudiced the defendant's insanity defense; and (4) the judge erred by instructing the jury against drawing an inference of guilt from any refusal by the defendant to participate in further evaluation of his mental state at Bridgewater State Hospital. We conclude that a faulty recitation to the defendant of the Miranda rights in the Khmer language prevented the defendant from executing a valid waiver of these rights, and that a subsequent reading to the defendant of the rights in the English language did not cure the defect sufficiently to permit a voluntary waiver. Accordingly, we reverse the judgments of conviction and order a new trial.2
1. Facts. We summarize the salient background facts the jury could have found and reserve other details for discussion in conjunction with the specific issues raised. In November, 1995, the defendant lived in Lowell with Chhong Yim, and the victims, Chhong Yim's three sons, ages fifteen, twelve and nine years, and her thirteen year old daughter, Sathy Men. Chhong Yim met the defendant in the early part of 1995, and in August, he moved in with her and her children. After the defendant was living in the apartment, the relationship soured. The defendant was very jealous of Chhong Yim and closely monitored her activities. Chhong Yim was unhappy with the defendant's inability to hold a steady job; his failure to pay his share of the rent (a condition of his moving in with the family); his habit of gambling at casinos; and his lack of a pleasant relationship with Chhong Yim's children. As a result, by October, 1995, she asked the defendant to move out. She said she did not love him, once more wanted to be alone with her children, and was even considering reconciling with her husband. The defendant refused to leave. Chhong Yim repeatedly asked the defendant to leave the apartment, to no avail. He insisted that he loved her and wanted to be with her. This situation apparently precipitated the defendant acting "different" toward the children and speaking to them even less than before.
On November 12, 1995, in the early morning hours, the defendant awoke Chhong Yim to ask what was the most important thing in her life. She replied, "gold, diamonds, money not important to [her]," but that "[her] children very important to [her]... more than anything in the world." Later that day, Chhong Yim visited friends in Lowell. The defendant unexpectedly arrived at the friends' home shortly thereafter. Chhong Yim told the defendant again that he must move from her apartment, this time insisting on a deadline: by the end of the month. The defendant appeared dismayed and visibly upset by this demand. He told Chhong Yim that he was going to a party, but did not do so. Instead, he went to the apartment next door to Chhong Yim's and telephoned her at her friends' home, begging her to give him another chance. She refused to do so, and, suspicious of the defendant's whereabouts, asked several times where he was. In response, the defendant lied and said that he was at another friend's house.
After the fruitless telephone conversation with Chhong Yim, the defendant returned to Chhong Yim's apartment, where he shot the four children who were home alone. Although the children tried to run away, they were unsuccessful, and each was shot in cold blood at least once. The defendant also stabbed one of the boys three times in the neck with a large knife. Sathy Men, the girl, fought the defendant and tried to flee a number of times, even after being shot. She finally kicked out a window screen and escaped by jumping out the window (the apartment was on the first floor).
After leaving the three young boys to die in the apartment, the defendant ran from the scene, but remained nearby. The defendant was observed disposing of something in a trash barrel. The police discovered the murder weapon in that barrel the next day.
The three boys succumbed to their wounds in the days following the attack. Sathy Men survived. In the hours following the shootings, she recounted the details of the violence to the police from her hospital bed and identified a photograph of the defendant. The police arrested the defendant at a friend's home and brought him to the Lowell police station, where he was booked. He was given his Miranda rights first in Khmer and then in English, and made statements to the police. At trial, given the testimony of the eyewitness, Sathy Men, the primary defense was lack of criminal responsibility. The Commonwealth used the defendant's statements to combat this defense.
2. Motion to suppress. The defendant claims that the motion judge erred in refusing to suppress his statements to the police because the Miranda warnings were inadequate: they were given to him in both Khmer and in English, and the Khmer version, given first, varied substantially from the warnings required by Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436 (1966).3 See Commonwealth v. Adams, 389 Mass. 265, 269 (1983).
The motion judge found that after the defendant was booked at the Lowell police station, and before he was interrogated, Officer Socheath Toun (a Cambodian immigrant whom the Lowell police often used as an interpreter), provided the defendant "a less than complete and accurate version of the Miranda warning in Khmer," and that the officer also advised the defendant of his "full Miranda rights in English." Although the judge made no finding as to the sequence of the warnings, the specific defects in the Khmer version, or that Khmer was the defendant's native language, there is no dispute that the warnings in Khmer preceded the English version, or that the defendant's native language was Khmer. As to the defects in the Khmer version of the warnings, the Commonwealth provides nothing in the record to contest Officer Toun's interpretation of the Khmer version. Thus, we accept his interpretation.
In regard to the defendant's understanding of English, the judge found that during the interview with the police, the defendant said that he understood English, and the officers were able to understand him; and that throughout the booking and interrogation processes, the police asked the defendant numerous questions in English, to which he responded appropriately in English. Further, the judge found that the defendant had communicated with the police in English several months before the instant crimes when the defendant was a victim of a home invasion; that when he was interrogated in Khmer by staff of the Cambridge jail about certain facts relevant to the instant crimes, he responded as he had when previously questioned by the Lowell police in English; and that the one time that the defendant indicated to the police that he could not understand a word (apparently at the booking that preceded the interrogation), the defendant was provided an interpreter. The latter fact, the judge found, indicated that the defendant was not afraid to indicate incomprehension if it existed and also "that thereafter he had no reason" to believe that a "complaint of incomprehension would be made in vain." The judge concluded that the Commonwealth had met its burden of demonstrating that the defendant possessed sufficient fluency to understand and voluntarily waive his Miranda rights when advised in English, "despite the fact that [the] reading of the Miranda warning" in Khmer "was less than complete and accurate."
We have examined the record of the motion to suppress to discern the specific deficiencies in the Khmer warnings. Officer Toun, who advised the defendant of his rights in both languages, testified at the motion hearing that at the police station he had read the defendant a standard form Miranda warning sheet that includes the warnings in both English and Khmer. The defendant signed the form to indicate that he understood what had been read to him. This signed form was introduced in evidence and the officer used that form to "translat[e] into English [the rights] as they appeared [in Khmer] on that sheet" (i.e., the officer translated the rights as they appeared on the form in Khmer into English at the motion hearing):4
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